1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to fluid infusion devices and, more particularly, to automatic infusion devices which are highly adaptable to the contours of a patient's body.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prior art infusion devices can be divided into two categories, those which are portably mountable to an ambulatory patient, and those which are not mountable and require the patient to be confined to a bed or chair. The design of the portably mountable devices usually leaves much to be desired. Even though the devices allow the patient to be ambulatory, their designs usually cannot conveniently be made to conform to the contours of the patient's body. An example of portably mountable devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,415,419 issued to Jewett and in copending application 408,264 by Szabo and Del Guercio, Szabo and Del Guercio also being the inventors of the present invention.
Nonmountable devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,498,672 issued to Glass and 3,701,345 issued to Heilman, and also include the standard gravity bed bottle systems. These mountable devices also suffer from the adaptability disadvantage of the portably mountable devices. They further suffer from the disadvantage of restricting the movement of the patient to whom they are connected.